Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Michigan Is About to Have the Best Climate Policies of Any Battleground State

Governor Gretchen Whitmer is set to sign a package of ambitious decarbonization laws.

Gretchen Whitmer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Michigan looks likely to pass an aggressive package of climate laws this week, as the state’s Democrats are set to capitalize on their first governing trifecta in nearly four decades.

The climate laws would require that 100% of Michigan’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040, putting the state on par with the fastest state-level decarbonization deadlines nationwide. New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Oregon also aim to achieve zero-carbon electricity by 2040.

The bills would also open a new Just Transition Office within the Michigan Department of Labor and strengthen the state’s energy-efficiency and utility laws.

While other states have passed aggressive climate legislation, none of them are as politically contested — or quite as central to national politics — as Michigan.

“What’s really exciting is that this is probably the most purple state we’ve seen with a bold climate package on the cusp of the finish line,” Courtney Bourgoin, a senior policy manager for Evergreen Action, a climate advocacy group, told me.

“It’s going to be significant. This is a very pragmatic plan, but it builds off a strong foundation that we have in Michigan,” state Senator Sam Singh, who introduced one of the bills, told me. “It also positions us well to pull down the federal dollars that are available for this transition.”

Michigan’s Democrats are enjoying their first statehouse majority in nearly four decades. They have already repealed the state’s anti-union “right to work” laws and passed new LGBT protections.

The suite of four climate laws passed the state House of Representatives last week and is expected to go to the state Senate for a final vote in the next few days. The Senate already approved an earlier version of the legislation.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign the laws after passage. In August, Garlin Gilchrist, the state’s lieutenant governor, suggested in a speech that Whitmer supported the laws. Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan initially proposed zeroing out carbon pollution from the power sector by 2050, not 2040.

“The climate crisis is urgent,” Gilchrist said at the time. “We need to act now. We need to act legislatively. We need to act administratively.”

Here’s what the four proposed laws would do:

The first law sets a new, 100% clean-energy target by 2040. It also rewrites the state’s existing renewable portfolio standard to require that 60% of the state’s electricity come from wind, solar, or another renewable source by 2034. (The remaining 40% of electricity could come from nuclear power or natural gas with carbon capture.)

The second law sets new energy efficiency requirements for the state’s power and gas utilities. For the first time, utilities must spend at least 25% of their efficiency funds on low-income communities.

The law also encourages utilities to electrify people’s homes in the state by installing induction stoves or heat pumps. That’s particularly important because Michigan ranks among the top five states for use of home-heating oil.

A third law will allow the state’s public service commission, which regulates utilities, to consider climate and reliability questions while planning the state’s electricity grid.

The final law establishes a new Just Transition Office within the state’s labor and economic-development office that will advise the government about how best to retrain and help workers and communities who are hurt by decarbonization.

The office, for instance, could help connect “internal combustion engine vehicle workers” with retraining opportunities, counseling, skills matching, and potentially ways to replace their lost income. Most of its work would come from proposing new state programs, writing “transition plans” for various industries, or identifying federal funding. (My sense is that the office would be as effective and useful as the person directing it.)

“We’re going to be working with industry and workers concurrently,” Singh said. “I’m excited because we ensured that equity is part of the conversation as well as making sure we put strong labor requirements in as well.”

Another pair of proposals would let renewable-energy developers apply to the state’s public service commission for permission to build a project instead of going through a local zoning board. Michigan has highly restrictive local-level zoning rules on building new solar and wind, Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan researcher, told me.

While those proposals have passed the House, their fate in the Senate is less certain. The state’s fall legislative session ends on Friday.

Blue

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

Trump’s Nuclear Dream Only Works in a Few Places

At least in the short term, developers looking to build quickly have just a few sites to choose from.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump aims to spur the biggest nuclear development boom this side of the 21st century. The big question: Will it work?

Trump signed a fleet of executive orders on Friday seeking to quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity, expanding generation from 100 gigawatts today to 400 gigawatts by 2050. To that end, he also set a near-term goal to start construction on 10 new conventional reactors by 2030 — that is, within the next five years.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Energy

AM Briefing: A Renewables Reprieve in Texas

On a state legislative session, German Courts, and U.S. permitting personnel

Texas Legislators Grant Renewables a Reprieve
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: The first named tropical storm of the year appears to be forming in the Pacific Ocean as Tropical Storm Alvin • Northern California braces for temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend • It’s cloudy and cool in Manhattan, where Wednesday night the Court of International Trade threw out much of Trump’s tariff regime.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Texas anti-renewables bills won’t get crucial vote

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Ideas

Why the Rest of the World Can’t Just Work Around U.S. Climate Policy

We’re too enmeshed in the global financial system for decarbonization to work without us.

A bald eagle glaring at clean energy.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The United States is now staring down the barrel of what amounts to a full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy tax credits and loan authorities. Not even the House Republicans who vocally defended the law, in the end, voted against President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” To be sure, there’s no final outcome yet — leading Republican senators don’t seem satisfied with the bill headed their way, and energy sector lobbyists are ready to push harder. But the fact that House Republicans were willing to walk away from billions of dollars of public spending for their districts and perhaps $1 trillion worth of economic growth is a flashing red sign that Trump’s politics have capsized the once-watertight argument that the IRA would be too important to American businesses and communities to be destroyed.

The Biden Administration touted the IRA as the United States’ marquee investment not just in reducing emissions and promoting economic development, but also in bringing back American manufacturing to compete against China in the market for advanced technologies. The Trump administration takes this apparent conflict with China seriously ― the threat of economic decoupling looms large ― but seems to have no desire to compete the way the Biden administration did. Rather than commit to the solar, wind, battery, grid, and electric vehicle investments that are laying the foundation for a manufacturing revival, the Trump administration has doubled down on the conjoined ideas that America should be self-sufficient and should play to its strengths: critical minerals, nuclear, natural gas, and even coal. Never mind that Trump’s tariff policy and his party’s deep cuts to energy-related spending will stop these plans, too, in their tracks. “Energy dominance” has always been a smokescreen ― of fossil fuels, by fossil fuels, for fossil fuels.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue